


The Red Riding Room

by BeneficialAddiction



Series: Boxers, Briefs, and Other Shorts [11]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Red Riding Hood - Freeform, Red Riding Hood Elements, Red Riding Hood Nat, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, The Red Room, Vampire Phil, Werewolf Clint, Werewolf Hunters, What Happened in Budapest, natasha's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 19:32:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10973907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/pseuds/BeneficialAddiction
Summary: Red Riding Hood and her Werewolf walk out of a bar...





	The Red Riding Room

They call them Red Riding Hoods.

For all that they make them grow up too fast, for all that they tell them love and fairy tales are for children, they can't seem to help themselves when it comes to the comparison. 

They take Natasha early, before she's even turned three. Her first real memory is of the accident, of the wolves coming in from the woods and surrounding the car, dragging her parents from the twisted wreck of the vehicle and tearing them apart. 

It's not until years later that she learns the truth, that Professor Chelintsov had laid the trap, wrote the design that would instill in her the hatred of the Big Bad Wolf. 

That was the beginning of the Red Room. 

Twenty eight girls made orphans, made witness to their parents murder by rogue werewolves or disgraced packs, all driven to starvation and desperation by Chelinstov and his minions, the _new mothers._ And they of course stepped in just in time, saved those little girls from their parents' violent end, fashioned themselves heroes and protectors of the world. 

So she grows, and is raised under the law of their Mistress-god, the ancient first Red Riding Hood. 

Natasha, with her ruby red hair and her hatred that burns like banked fire-brands, excels under the tutelage of the new mothers, and slays her first werewolf at the age of thirteen in the traditional right of passage the affords her the full honor and responsibility of a Red Riding Hood. She's given the badge she'd chosen for herself and crafted with her own hands, a jacket of soft black leather with an hourglass of blood red stitched onto the chest, given a set of steel knives and the canine teeth of the werewolf she'd killed, and unleashed on the world an assassin-murderess in a child's body. 

The next ten years are lean and painful, years of hunger and fighting and blood. She hurts and is hurt in return, cuts a swath through the werewolf packs of Russia and into Europe. The title Red Riding hood spreads in the dark corners and her name too with those rumors, whispers in the dark of a Black Widow leaving slaughter in her wake. 

She grows tired. 

It's a weary life, solitary, and while all thoughts of love had been driven from her, when at last she had lost all hope of finding someone who could share this life with her, she stumbles across Clint Barton. 

Or... he stumbles across her. 

She's never met anyone like him before. 

Dyed-black hair, too-skinny, not nearly as badly hurt as she looks, she stumbles through the filthy London backalleys with a rogue wolf hot on her heels, but before she can spring her trap, close the snare around him, the young, scruffy, vigilante archer comes somersaulting down from the fire escapes above and pins her would-be attacker to the wall with silver-tipped arrows. He dispatches the werewolf swiftly and with grim determination, turns to her with a question on his lips but she's already gone. 

She follows him for two weeks after that, and her heart, her cold unfeeling heart sinks into her stomach the first time she sees him change. In a filthy, run-down, rat-infested loft he strips his clothes and shakes out his pelt, a massive blonde beast as scarred as he is in his human form. Curling into a ball in the corner he shivers until he falls asleep, his huge, tufted ears swiveling atop his head, and for the first time in her life she hesitates. 

They're nothing new, the thoughts that come unbidden in the night. She's suspected, she's always suspected that there had been something... _off_ about the Red Riding Room. The day she'd left she'd cut the tracker from her body herself, the one they _hadn't_ told her about, and never once had she looked back, never once had she checked in. She'd caught them on her tail more than once and had always disappeared into the dark before they could get a bead on her, the instincts they'd taught her to hone shrieking like alarm bells even for them, her makers. 

This though, this is the first time she's seen a wolf hesitate to kill, to take down a human. 

By all rights he should have joined the hunt, driven by the call of pack and blood and the full, white moon that had hung white and heavy in the sky, but instead he'd saved her, and then had let her go instead of tracking her down, which would have been so easy for him to do. 

She knows he's better than she'd thought he was the night he stands at the window and stares out into the dark, straight at her where she should be invisible from half a block away. She can't move, can't breathe as she waits for some sign that she hasn't really been caught out, but the young man just smirks and lifts the window sash, leaves it open to the cool night air. 

It's another week before she accepts the invitation. 

It's another three before they speak. 

Two months later it's like they've always known each other, like they've never known anything different, and she doesn't know how or why it happens but she trusts him. He is hers, and she is his, and maybe she doesn't love him the way most people love, but she loves him as best as she knows how. For his part he loves her whole-heartedly, with everything he has, and he brings a light to her life that there's never been before. He makes her smile, makes her laugh, more in love with life than anyone – man, woman, or wolf – she's ever met. He too brands himself a hero, but does a far better job of it than she, fighting for what is good and right and judging only by a man's actions, not their bloodline. 

So they become partners, and for the first time she has someone to protect her and to protect in return. He's a mess, as much as he tries, and it makes some primal instinct stir deep inside her she thought long removed by the Red Room and Chelinstov's twisted morays. It should disturb her, distract her, but the werewolf needs all the help he can get and so she does her best to guide him, while still allowing herself to be led by his stronger moral compass. They balance each other, correct each other, _depend_ upon each other, and so it's understandable that she's suspicious when he finally falls in love. 

It happens after Budapest, the biggest disaster she's ever been a part of – and that includes the Red Riding Room. The pack there was much bigger, much worse then they'd been told and had coupled with the local Wiccan guild in their quest to become the ruling force behind the entire city. They'd practically leveled it as they made their get-away, battered and bruised, and she ends up thrown over Clint's shoulders, clutching at his fur as he drags her from the rubble of the citadel to the winter woods along the northern edge of the city. Her ankle is broken, his flank bleeding, and his breath turns to puffs of white air as he pants, pushed to the edge of his endurance but he won't leave her behind. 

Together they climb the cliffs, up into the trees, and as they splash across the icy river to safety Clint comes to a dead stop, his hackles rising against her cheek and a deep, vicious snarl rumbling up into her chest. Lifting her head, blinking away the blurriness, she palms her knives as she focuses on the man in front of them, the man who had appeared too quickly and too silently for the werewolf to avoid. 

He's calm as he faces them down, unarmed, his hands in the pockets of a neat, bespoke suit, the fires of the city reflected in bright blue eyes that saw too much. Normal, the type of man you wouldn't look twice at, except here he was in the middle of the Hungarian night and there's hunger on his face, a determination and desire that she recognizes all too well. 

"Clint Barton," he says flatly, dipping his chin in deference, "Natalia Romanova. My name is Phillip J Coulson and I work for the Supernatural House of the Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division." 

His irises flare black in the dark and he grins, his eyeteeth gleaming long and sharp and white beneath his lip. 

"But you can call us SHIELD. I have a proposition for you."


End file.
